In Wisconsin, 1911 Top Court Case Found Workers’ Comp Law Constitutional

Caselaw Curriculum

Over the next several months, we'll be covering landmark cases in the history of workers' compensation that have shaped the contours of the law across the country. Today, we kick off the foundational set of cases and head back to pre-WWI America. Simply Research subscribers have access to the full text of the decision.

Case

Borgnis v. Falk Co., 147 Wis. 327 (1911)

What Happened

Wisconsin enacted workers' compensation legislation "to provide a way by which employer and employed may, if they so choose, escape entirely from that very troublesome and economically absurd luxury known as 'personal injury litigation,' and resort to a system by which every employe not guilty of willful misconduct may receive at once a reasonable recompense for injuries accidentally received in his employment under certain fixed rules, without a lawsuit and without friction."

However, some employers waited to sign on in case the new law turned out to be unconstitutional. The chance for Wisconsin's top court to answer that question cropped up when an employer's decision to become subject to the "Workmen's Compensation Law" would allegedly compel workers to withdraw from contracts or submit to the provisions of the act.

Rule of Law

For this court, it was a "well–established principle that [a law] must be sustained, unless it be clear beyond reasonable question that it violates some constitutional limitation or prohibition."

What the Court Said

Reasoning that "[i]t was admitted by lawyers, as well as laymen, that the personal injury action brought by the employee against his employer to recover damages for injuries sustained by reason of the negligence of the employer had wholly failed to meet or remedy a great economic and social problem which modern industrialism has forced upon us, namely, the problem of who shall make pecuniary recompense for the toll of suffering and death which that industrialism levies and must continue to levy upon the civilized world," the court spelled out the case for the "Grand Bargain" and countered the attacks on the law's constitutionality.

Ultimately, the court determined that the challenges to the law, ranging from its classifications to its public policy implications to its vesting judicial power in the Industrial Commission -- "a body which is not a court and is not composed of men elected by the people" -- posed no problem, constitutionally speaking.

Regarding the Industrial Commission, the court explained that its jurisdiction depended on:

(1) Both the employer and employee electing to come under the act.

(2) The injury occurring "in service growing out of or incidental to the employment as the result of accident, and not willful misconduct."

Additionally, Industrial Commission decisions were subject to judicial review, ensuring due process.

"The tribunal only has authority over those who have voluntarily elected to give it authority, and if it can decide finally that a man has given consent, when he has not, it assumes the functions of a court," the court wrote. "If the act before us took away from the courts the power to consider these jurisdictional questions, either expressly or by necessary implication, the contention that judicial power had been vested in the commission, contrary to the command of the Constitution, would be of greater force; but we think that the act does not do this, or attempt to do it."

After disposing with an argument that the workers' compensation law affected employment contract on the basis that "there is no vested right in a mere remedy for a hypothetical wrong," the court concluded that the law passed constitutional muster.

Verdict: The court reversed and remanded the lower court's decision that upheld the challenge to the law.

Takeaway

Wisconsin's foray into the Grand Bargain did not violate the Constitution.

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